Empty Appointee Seats Hurt Federal Agency Performance

📌 What Was Studied:

This analysis evaluates how vacancies in presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed (PAS) positions relate to U.S. federal agency performance. The focus is on whether gaps in top appointments are associated with weaker agency outcomes as perceived by knowledgeable observers.

📊 How Performance Was Measured:

A new perceptual performance measure is used, drawn from evaluations provided by federal executives who work closely with the agencies they assess. Key features of the measure:

• Derived from expert evaluations by federal executives
• Comparable across different agencies
• Designed to avoid many limitations of existing administrative and objective performance metrics

🔍 Key Findings:

• There is a robust correlation between vacancies in PAS positions and lower evaluations of agency performance.
• This negative relationship persists even when accounting for differences in the way Republican and Democratic federal executives perceive performance.
• The association is consistent across the cross-agency perceptual measure, suggesting the effect is not an artifact of particular agencies or measurement choices.

💡 Why It Matters:

The findings imply that dysfunction in the U.S. appointment process—measured as unfilled PAS positions—has meaningful consequences for how well federal agencies perform key tasks. The results also carry implications for how performance should be measured and interpreted in a politically polarized environment, highlighting the need for comparability and attention to partisan perceptions when using perceptual data.